A motorized Mardi Gras. This is a
theme that’s catching on in South Africa, the most recent
being the Raceline Autofest in Vereeniging. The idea is to bring
motoring madness downtown, rather than to some austere stadium
setting.

From low-rider-cool to period-classic dress-up, the Show ‘n’
Shine attracted cars from all genres, including this low-mileage
Alfa GTV with something every classic Alfa owner lusts after –
a crack-free original dashboard!

Even bog-standard cars like a Mazda Sting have a place in the
Show ‘n ‘ Shine –as long as there’s enough
attention to detail.

The engine is standard apart from the air-cleaner, but there’s
more than enough chrome-plating on the valve cover, exhaust
shield and countless ancillaries to justify its show-worthiness.

Now, what do we have here? A Jensen Interceptor? A Reliant
Scimitar? And how about that rear-end? Definite Lamborghini
Countach influences, while in profile there’s a hint of De
Tomaso Pantera.

Owner Martiens Britz took eight years to build this car which
started life as a Jaguar XJ6 Series 3. And, like many old Jag
X-Jays, it’s now powered by a Chevy V8.

Ford V6 power motivates a late 1940s Ford Anglia, which has
been turned into a cute little pick-up, with candy-apple paint
and plenty of attitude.

Turbocharged BMC hardware is at the heart of a classic Mini
Marcos, a 1960s sports car based on the Mini Cooper S.

Not to worry Perana fans. Across the street was a "jen-you-whine",
mint-condition Basil Green Capri, complete with Rostyle mags,
bumble-bee 1970’s paint, and the proper Ford 302 V8. Back in
1970 this South African classic was good for two-hundred and
twenty kilometers-an-hour, and 0-100 in 6,5 seconds.

The Castrol mobile dyno, designed and built by Roland Squires,
has added an extra dimension to the street-car Mardi Gras scene.

The Vereeniging crowd was blown away by Andre de Beer’s Mark 1
Escort, which took to the
rollers with deceptively little drama.

The rated power output of its Mazda Turbo engine? A staggering
335 kiloWatts, and this in a car he drives to work and back
every day of the week!

To put Andre’s Escort into perspective, most of the dyno-runs
yielded outputs between 70 and 120 kiloWatts. A dyno, or engine brake as it was once called, is the
ultimate reality check in the horsepower game.

When it came to sound, all the big names in car sound were at Vereeniging and these
included Starsound, Kenwood, Boschmann, Pioneer and Ice Power.

Visual installation dress-ups are important in the top end of
the car audio game, but when push comes to shove – or maybe
that should be when tweeter comes to woofer – it’s all about
decibels.

Above a certain decibel level, it isn’t safe for a human ear
drum to be cooped up with these kind of vibrations. Hence the
behind-closed-doors aspect of many sound competition categories.

A decibel meter is placed on a designated point on the
dashboard, and then it’s time to crank up the volume, Hey,
baby!

With all sorts of cultural and lifestyle exponents organizing
street parades, what could be more fitting than a street
carnival for…well, cars of course!

We look forward to the next mobile Mardi Gras, where motorheads
bring the cars to the people.

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